Paul Brian Bassanio is a music researcher working on Punjabi musical traditions in Pakistan, with a focus on religious repertoires, performance practices, and minority cultural memory. His research examines how music shapes identity and community through embodied practice, transmission, and performance. He is particularly interested in Punjabi Christian musical traditions such as Punjabi Psalms and how these repertoires circulate across congregations, recordings, and digital media. His work brings together cultural studies and music research, with attention to questions of authorship, lineage, and authority in vernacular musical practices. Through analytical writing grounded in lived musical practice, he contributes to conversations on music, identity.

Abstract

The Punjabi Zaboor is one of the most durable bodies of Christian song in Punjab. Its 150 metrical Psalms entered worship through a process that joined biblical translation, Punjabi poetry, raag based composition, oral performance, Western staff notation and mission print culture. That process was collaborative, yet its participants did not receive equal recognition. Imam ud Din Shahbaz is remembered as the poet translator, while Radha Kishan, the Hindu professional singer associated with the musical settings, and the itinerant musicians whose repertoire informed missionary listening practices remain less visible. This paper reads the Zaboor as a case of distributed authorship shaped by unequal archival power. It asks how a melody moves from embodied memory into a printed and citable object, and how that movement determines who can be named as an author. It then considers the Zaboor's continuing authority among Punjabi Christians, particularly where communal singing sustains religious memory beyond the security of buildings and institutions. The paper argues that the Zaboor's authenticity does not depend on a pure origin. It rests in a long history of translation, negotiation and repeated use. Recovering that history does not weaken Christian belonging. It makes the tradition's Punjabi formation more fully audible.

Keywords  Punjabi Zaboor, authorship, oral tradition, archive, Music authority, Punjabi Christianity, artistic research